Gman: glad to see that I am, again, largely in agreement with you.
The reason I say that I am torn about religion being taught in schools is that I do believe religion is an important part of humanity. I don't really trust that the majority of people, parents, are in a position to openly and honestly communicate the wealth and variety of religion in the world today, I certainly can't claim to be in that position. It is often citied that many of the troubles in the world today are due to differences in religious thought, I feel if children were educated without bias on the theology and cultural aspects of at least the main players in world religion, and non-religion, then it may go some way to alleviating these troubles. For example I don't believe the world will necessarily become a better place to live if the children of some atheist parents are schooled only on the evils of Chritianity and vice versa. If any other subject like maths, science, language or art was left solely to my parents I feel I would be sorely lacking in the insights I have gained from many wonderful, and not so wonderful, teachers over the years.
The problem is that many parents are resistant to these ideas, they do not want their children coming home from school at a young age holding some very difficult to answer questions regarding the family faith or non-faith they are being brought up with - being brought up in a fairly strict Roman Catholic environment by parents with little to no interest in theology confirms this for me, my mother went from strong theism to strong atheism due to the worldly actions of one individual. To my knowledge non-denominational schools in Scotland are required to pick a base system, in practice normally Protestant Christianity, which is practiced in school eg. reasonably regular services, with the option for parents to allow their children to be excluded from these activities. Religious lessons exploring the wealth and variety of religion still takes place but in my mind this is from a model which is by nature biased to one particular system, teaching staff are also more likely to choose to work in a school which subscribes to their own ideas and this further complicates the matter of non-biased teachings.
If a decent curriculum for religion is put in place I'm not sure that parents should be in any position to request their child not be taught about different religions any more than they should be able to request their child be taught only about music with no mention of art or drama. That is what home schooling is for.
I'm not too hopeful that I will live to see such a system.
My personal response to my daughter being taught some very definite ideas about God or religion is to occasionally counter her assertions with opposites: if God is man who lives in the sky, maybe God is a woman who lives in the ground etc... Further chat leads me down the path of admitting my own ignorance and to not just believe what people say - no one knows any better than you do especially me, mum and your teacher in these matters.
Oops. I seem to have gone off topic a little, sorry
godslanguage: thanks for a very insightful post. I'll admit to having skimmed and largely dismissed the info you presented at the top of page two.
The ideas presented in the links are very interesting and exactly what I was looking for. I've often looked at diagrams of chromosomes from different species presented side by side with colour coding to represent corresponding sections. They are used as teaching devices to show the percentage of similarity between species, those links go a great way to providing a solution to my nagging idea as to why there are in completely different places.
Also nicely chimes in nicely with my ideas about there being far more juicy gossip at the bedrock of current evolutionary thought.
I will have a look at the other links over the next few weeks, hopefully.
I would like to post those links over on the Atheist Toolbox to see what some of the more evolutionary savvy posters opinions are. I thought I better ask, or a least mention, first for fear of appearing to head off elsewhere to gain ammunition for a response, this is not my intention and seems better than just waiting it out a month or two and doing it anyway.
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